It's My Nature » Multiple Exposure

Branching Out

Ed — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:14:57 +0000

This is another 10-image multiple exposure image that I made recently.

I have been giving multiple exposures, pans, digital sandwiches, etc. a lot of thought lately, particularly after reading about some different techniques in a book entitled Photo Impressionism and the Subjective Image by Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant. I would highly recommend the book if you have any interest at all in impressionistic photography. It really got my creative juices flowing and I am looking forward to “branching out” (thus the title of this post) into other types of multiple exposures and impressionistic photography now that spring is upon us. I like images like the one above but am even more excited about the prospects of introducing a lot more color into my multiple exposures and pans.

Keep an eye out for some (hopefully) exciting new stuff from “It’s My Nature”.

Birches

Ed — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:01:39 +0000

(Vertical Pan; 1.0 sec @ f/14; ISO 100; 0 EV; FL 70mm w/ Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L and my 5D Mark II)

There was a short break in the rains this morning so we headed out in search of something to photograph. I followed the fog to the top of South Mountain and Lehigh University’s Mountaintop Campus. I made a few fog images which I may post a little later but then I came across a pair of birches just off the side of the road. I pulled off the road and on to the shoulder, got out and started to work the pair of birches. I made images from several different perspectives but ended up liking the one above the best. It is a very busy image and it is that busy-ness that really appeals to me here.

With birches on my mind, I decided to return to Trexler Park in Allentown, PA where I had spotted a couple of real nice birches a couple of weeks back. The light wasn’t what I wanted that day so I filed these trees away in the back of my brain with a promise to return at a later date when the light would be more diffuse. That was today. Again my objective was to work the trees with both motion blur and multiple exposures. The first example below is a 10-image multiple exposure made with my Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens, tripod-mounted.

(10-image Multiple Exposure; 1/125 sec @ f/4.0; ISO 400; 0EV; FL 140mm)

As I was working the multiple exposures, the rains started up again. So I finished up by taking the 5DMk2 and 70-200mm f/2.8 off the tripod, stopping down to f/22 and dropping the ISO to 100 in order to lengthen the shutter speed to 1.0 sec allowing me to make some images with the vertical pan technique. Same trees, same perspective, different technique and different look.

ZOOM – Blurs and Multiple Exposures of a Gerbera Daisy

Ed — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:48:32 +0000

If you’ve come via the home page or wandered through the galleries, you may have seen these images before even though they are barely 24 hours old. I took some time yesterday and worked on making images of the Gerbera that were different from what I often see and interesting to me from a compositional perspective.

This first image is a single image zoom blur made with my Canon 50D and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens w/ a 500D close-up filter/lens; tripod mounted. I set up for a long exposure (2.0 sec @ f/20; ISO 100; -2/3 EV), started with the lens at 70mm and a brief pause before zooming to 200mm where I ended on a brief pause before the shutter closed. The result can be seen above.

The second image here is a 10-image zoom multiple exposure. I focused in on the flower at 70mm and following each exposure, I zoomed in a little more ending at 200mm. As I zoomed in shutter speed varied from 3.2 sec at 70mm to 1.6 sec at 200mm @ f/20; ISO 100; -1 EV. The images were combined in Photoshop using a script written/designed by Uwe Steinmueller & Tony Sweet. The result can be seen below.

The third image is a 4-image zoom multiple exposure created the same way as described above. The four images were shot at 70mm, 100mm, 135mm, and 200mm. You can see the resultant image below.

A Tale of Corruption, Tall Pines and Multiple Exposures

Ed — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 12:23:28 +0000

Well it’s 0643 on Saturday morning and we are still waiting on the much anticipated pre-holiday snowstorm. Yesterday, I decided to take a half day of PTO (Personal Time Off) and go out in search of some images to make. As I was driving home from the office, I reviewed the options in my head and quickly settled in on a return trip to the local reservoir area. There is a fairly large (about half the size of a football field) grassy area that is surrounded by tall pines and I love to shoot there… especially when in the mood for blurs, multiple exposures and such.

And that is the mood that I was in yesterday. I have been working on an “Artist’s Statement” and writing it has led me clarify and better define what is “my art”. I think it is clear to those of you who have been following this blog for the past year that “my art” has been moving steadily in the direction of abstract photography, however that abstract quality is obtained. I love flower portraits. I love bird portraits. And will continue to do them. But my heart, my art is in the area of abstracts, digital art, blurs, multiple exposures, etc.

Anyway, this long story is just getting longer. So I went to the reservoir, set up in the grassy area, and started making images. They come quickly when you are planning on 10-image multiple exposures and I clicked off images for a series of those. Then I settled in on a series of in-camera single image motion blurs before ending with some textural tree bark blurs. Happy with what I had done, I headed for home.

Once home, I took the memory card out of the camera, inserted it into the card reader and started importing images. Suddenly TILT! Error messages abounded. And I couldn’t get the import to continue. Something in Lightroom seemed to be affected and it couldn’t self-correct. So it was on the phone to Adobe. About 90 minutes later, we concluded the problem was corrupted files on the memory card. I was going to have to set up a whole new folder and transfer all my old images to it and dump the images made yesterday. BUMMER!!

Long story short, I did what the tech told me to do. I create a new folder and moved all old images into it. I got Lightroom going the way I wanted once again. Everything seem fine except for the lost images on the corrupt card (I have since re-formatted the card and hopefully it will work fine in the future. It is also an argument for using multiple say 2 GB cards instead of a single 32 GB, for example.). Then last evening, I went to my external hard drive to clean the corrupt files from it and what did I find? All the images from yesterday were stored there with no sign of any corrupt files. Sooo, lesson number two is have back-up.

I was able to pull the images from the external hard drive and work with them. Here are two 10-image multiple exposures from yesterday and the happy ending to the tale of corruption, tall pines and multiple exposures.

The images combined for both were made with my Canon 30D and 24-70 2.8L lens, tripod-mounted to help minimize any horizontal movement in the multiple exposures.

Twofer Today

Ed — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:15:23 +0000

I got out for a short time this morning and continued to experiment with motion blurs and multiple exposures. I have to admit that the more I experiment with these techniques the more I am liking the results.

Anyway, here are two examples. First the straight, single image vertical pan/motion blur image made with my Canon 50D and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens handheld.

And the second image is another 10-image multiple exposure also shot with the 50D/70-200 combo but on a tripod.

I know we all draw a line somewhere and everything to the left is a photographic image and everything to right is… well, something else. I am just finding myself sliding that magical line a little farther and a little farther to the right. There is still light years of space out there to the right of my shifting line where, right now, I feel that maybe I’m pushing the envelope too far but I will continue to explore those uncharted (for me) universes. So I hope you hang on and enjoy the trip as much as I am.

Ground Control to Major Tom, can you here me Major Tom?

Trees, Fog and Multiple Exposure

Ed — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:44:35 +0000

Good Morning and Happy Thanksgiving to all my blog visitors.

I was up way too early this morning (think pre-0400). Thoughts of preparing the Thanksgiving repast (I’m the cook in the family) fought with thoughts of getting out and trying a couple of different photographic techniques. In the end, I got things started in the kitchen and then left my wife to watch over everything while I headed out for my local creek right around sunrise. It was very overcast (still is) and quite foggy. But that was fine, I enjoy shooting in the fog.

If you have visited my blog at all recently, you know I am quite taken by abstracts and blurs resulting from camera pans. Today, I wanted to give multiple exposure a try. Multiple exposures are one of those things that are easy if you are a Nikon shooter. Multiple exposure capability is built into the upper end cameras. Not so with Canon which is what I shoot. I have to shoot however many individual images and then combine them in Photoshop by layering each image and varying the opacity of each. I’m sorry but that is way too much trouble. So I really stayed away from shooting MEs until now when I was shown a shortcut that makes the process much easier.

So here is my first attempt at a multiple exposure abstract. The subject, two trees and some fog, may not be terribly exciting but it did allow me to experiment with the ME process. And I don’t think the result is too terrible.

Canon 50D; Canon 24-70mm f/2.8L; tripod.

So here it is… 10 exposures each panned just slightly upward from the prior one; each shot at 1/25 sec @ f/5.6; ISO 640; -1/3 EV.